


Lay Down Your Sweet and Weary Head

by WhatEvenAmI



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Feels, Gen, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Tenderness, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-03
Updated: 2015-11-03
Packaged: 2018-04-29 18:19:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5137841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhatEvenAmI/pseuds/WhatEvenAmI
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>The Soldier does not understand why these new handlers are being so gentle with him.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lay Down Your Sweet and Weary Head

**Author's Note:**

> Got tagged in the Tumblr meme to write a short thing in 5 minutes. (But I got tagged twice so I took ten.)

The Soldier does not understand why these new handlers are being so gentle with him.

He is tended to as a human would be, with care and with affection, and while the Soldier would be enjoying this rare and inexplicable luxury, this time he truly does not deserve it.

And they must know it. They must know he allowed HYDRA’s most prized helicarrier to plummet from the sky. That the target has not been eliminated due to a programming malfunction that insisted that the Soldier was to save him instead?

He has reduced HYDRA to a shell of what it was. Years of planning and careful work, brought to tattered scraps by his own error. He doesn’t deserve the tenderness with which he is examined on the table. 

When he says so, when he apologizes, there are expressions of utmost sorrow in their faces. The Soldier does not understand that either, but a vaguely familiar woman lays her hand on his shoulder and he obediently lies back against the table, his profuse apologies silenced. They ask if there’s anything they can get him. The Soldier does not understand the question.

There’s a man—the technician?—examining his metal arm, taking inventory of the parts and making notes to himself under his breath. Even his hands, with their eager probing and their sharp, shiny little tools, are soft and cautious in an unprecedented way. They don't hurt. Though the tenderness is unwarranted and unearned, the Soldier can't help relaxing as he allows the technician to dismantle the exterior of the arm, sketching the inner mechanisms on scrap paper.

It’s only when the inner workings of the arm are removed that the Soldier’s suspicions are confirmed. The sorrow, the misplaced sympathy they have for him.

“Decommissioning protocol, commence,” the woman begins, connecting the sedative bag to the Soldier’s intravenous line, “and Hail HYDRA.”

“Hail HYDRA,” The Soldier obediently repeats, one last time.

He hopes that the next asset to receive the pieces for that arm is more successful than he was. In fact, the next asset will have to be, in order to clean up the mess that he has left behind.

He hopes that the deconstructed arm will be given to a more worthy Soldier. It was a very worthy arm.

“Decommissioning protocol commenced,” he whispers numbly as he begins to drift away.


End file.
